Alibaba beats revenue expectations on cloud boost

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd beat fourth-quarter revenue forecasts on Wednesday, thanks to growth in its core business and its diversification into cloud computing and other services. Alibaba has invested in new business lines such as cloud computing as a boom in its core e-commerce has peaked and its top line growth is slowing. It reported a 51% increase in group revenue for January-March from a year earlier to 93.50 billion yuan ($13.6 billion), beating estimates of 91.58 billion yuan, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.